Grammar Lesson: Future Continuous

What will you be doing this time next year? Where will you be studying? We use the Future Continous to express an action or something that will be happening at a precise moment in the future. While certain sentences in the Future Continuous are relatively accurate, others might be wild predictions. Furthermore, because we are referring to a specifc moment in time, future time references are essential when fluently producing Future Continous forms.

The basic consturction when forming the Future Continuous is as follows:

1. This time next week, we will be shopping in London.
2. In 2020, people will be buying smaller houses.
3. Tomorrow afternoon, Jessica will be taking her driving test.
4. They will be putting the children to bed at 8.30pm.

All of these examples match the grammatical rule listed above. All except for sentence 4. Here we can see that the Future Time Reference has been applied at the end of the sentence. This is perfectly acceptable when using the Future Continuous. Consider the following:

5. We’ll be getting married in March.
6. In March, we’ll be getting married.

7. In three years time, I’ll be studying Medicine.
8. I’ll be studying medicine in three years time.

In both sentence pairs, the use of time reference is grammatically correct. Where you would like to place this reference is up to you!